GABI VILLASEÑOR // “We found a freshwater spring while you were sleeping”

On view October 17–November 21, 2026
Opening reception Saturday, October 17 (2–4pm)

Nationale is delighted to welcome long-time collaborator Gabi Villaseñor for her debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Moving between painting and ceramic, “We found a freshwater spring while you were sleeping” is an ode to searching for awe in the everyday. The works presented immerse the viewer in Villaseñor’s surrealistic world wherein colorful, elusive landscapes mark breathtaking unions with her natural surroundings. Shells, flowers, portals, reflections, butterflies, and webs are just a few of the motifs represented that provide a grounding element, serving as still points in an ever-shifting environment. These fragmented moments, when pieced together like a collage and layered through paint, become the stronghold of the work. Diaristic in nature, the artist means to convey the strength and story in the minutiae that sustains us. 

Paintings and ceramics alike share a tension between technical precision and loose, expressive strokes. A united color palette and stylistic nature form the foundation until structure is abandoned for intuition. In Freshwater Spring, a cascading waterfall pours onto a pale pink backdrop adorned with dots of bright flora and snaking tendrils of greenery. Foreground and background meld into a singular, whimsical narrative. The desire to move towards a complete and unencumbered chaos can also be seen in a sculptural work like Tethered Together, in which what first appears to be a vase is freed from expectation and transformed by its medium. Sinewy coils of clay interlock and attach to the body of the piece, their unexpected appearance mirroring the unpredictable act of art making. Stemming from her long-standing conceptual project Mixed Needs, this experiment of prioritizing form over function is visible also in Villaseñor’s ceramic wall pieces on display for this exhibition.

The sole figurative work, Giving Him the Moon, most overtly explores the balancing act of care-giving and self-preservation. A maternal figure in red, perhaps the artist herself, is observed with arms outstretched gathering her surroundings for a child resting in the bottom left corner. Whereas the child is focused intensely on an insect at his feet his mother is tasked as both provider and observer. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction plays an important role in understanding these works, the idea that humanity’s first invention was a bag meant to gather, carry, and hold nourishment rather than any tool, instrument, or weapon often lauded after. Reframed within the context of “We found a freshwater spring while you were sleeping,” Villaseñor’s metaphorical bag gives her the permission to collect, hold, notice, and translate mundane acts of survival as both important, life sustaining behavior and as creative outpouring.

When the days become heavy with responsibility, how can we appreciate the slow in-betweenness? Despite our best efforts to capture every precious detail, even in sleep, the world keeps spinning. What we make of each revelation is entirely up to us. 

Gabi Villaseñor is a visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA in Painting and Intermedia from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2011. Her paintings and sculptures explore our complex inner worlds and search for the unexplainable, drawing on the natural environment. They have been featured in POPEYE, Architectural Digest, and Domino, at Bullpen in Tokyo, and are included in the collections of Hotel Reynard and Hotel Captain Whidbey. She recently showed at Hi Books in Portland, OR, and in a group exhibition at Nationale this past summer.

SNEAK PEEK

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